Saturday Night Showcase> Space:1999

Space: 1999 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When I went to middle school there were only two comics I ever saw apart from the ones my friends and I were making. One was an adaptation of The Black Hole, Disney’s attempt at making a family-friendly space thriller. The other was what we now call a trade collection of comics based on Space: 1999, one of the live-action science fiction series produced by then-married couple Gerry and Silvia Anderson made for the UK. The series is about the moon being blasted out of Earth orbit and into outer space.

Tonight we’ll be looking at the first episode of the series, starring Martin Landau, as we see just how the push into space began. How DO you turn a moon into a natural spaceship? Let’s learn the answer together as the only time this show was on local TV I never caught it.

I like the series. It has a multiracial crew, the special effects and miniatures are good for their time, and I like the mechanical designs. Except for the guns and that weird communicator that looks more like scanning equipment. Modern-day smartphones still have those beat.

When you were in middle school, didn’t you also see the Transformers and Thundercats comic books that were being sold at one of the pharmacies in our hometown (the pharmacy that sold homemade milkshakes)? I thought you were getting those comics back then too. I’m aware of Space 1999’s existence but have never seen it. Hey, you should post some pages from that comic you have of it. Do a review of it too. Maybe I will check out an episode of Space 1999 to see what it was like. The only space television show that I faintly remember watching as a very young kid in the 70s would have been Battlestar Galactica.

Space 1999 and Black Hole were on the shelves in a classroom when we were in middle school? Do you remember which classroom? I’ll be giving you a call tomorrow so I can ask you then. I am curious to learn more about Space 1999 and will check out an episode. I did look it up on wikipedia. And when that pharmacy stopped selling comics, that was around when I started going once a month to the comic store in the town 10 miles north from our hometown (main reason because that was the only place that sold Robotech comics). So then starting in December 1985, I would make a monthly trip to that comic store to buy Thundercats and Robotech comic books. I started getting a subscription to Transformers comic books in March 1986…delivered to my home. And I stopped collecting Transformers comic books around Dec. 1987 when my subscription. But yes,that pharmacy is where I really started getting comic books. I rremember the joy as a kid of seeing Transformers and Thundercats comics in there.